Resistance & Resilience
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This study examines tree growth and mortality associated with spring and fall burning repeated at five (5 yr) and fifteen-year (15 yr) intervals in six previously thinned ponderosa pine stands in the southern Blue Mountain Ecoregion near Burns, Oregon, USA. Each stand consisted of an unburned control, and four season-by-burn interval treatments: spring 5 yr, spring 15 yr, fall 5 yr, and fall 15 yr. Burning was initiated in fall 1997 and spring 1998. Pine height and diameter growth was evaluated in 2013, 15 years following initial treatment. Mortality was assessed annually from 2002 to 2017, when these stands experienced severe defoliation from pine butterfly (PB, Neophasia menapia), followed by a moderate outbreak of western pine beetle (WPB, Dendroctonus brevicomis), allowing us to examine resistance to these disturbances. Pine in the 5 yr fall treatments added more diameter than spring 15 yr and marginally more than spring 5 yr, while fall 15 yr added marginally more diameter than spring 15 yr. In addition, the fall 5 yr treatments had lower mortality associated with prescribed fire, PB, WPB, Ips spp., red turpentine beetle (RTB, D. valens), and mountain pine beetle (MPB, D. ponderosae), but the effect was not always significant. Annosus root disease (ARD, caused by Heterobasidion irregulare) and black stain root disease (BSRD, caused by Leptographium wagneri var. ponderosum) appear to be unaffected by burning. However, BSRD occurrence dramatically declined in all treatments, probably a result of thinning prior to study initiation. Results from this study demonstrate that repeated fall burning, especially at 5-year intervals, improves ponderosa pine diameter growth and may provide resistance to future biotic and abiotic disturbances while spring burning, regardless of frequency, does not.
Access report.
Ecological Site Descriptions (ESD) synthesize information concerning soils, hydrology, ecology, and management into a user-friendly document. A crucial component of an ESD is the state-and-transition model (STM) that identifies the different vegetation states, describes the disturbances that caused vegetation change, and suggests restoration activities needed to restore plant communities. State-and-transition models are powerful tools that utilize professional knowledge, data, and literature to describe the resistance and resilience of an ecological site. The STM then captures various disturbances, triggers leading to ecological thresholds, feedback mechanisms maintaining ecological states, and the restoration techniques required for moving from one ecological state to another (Briske et al. 2008, Stringham et al. 2003).
Visit the PJ website, authored by Rick Miller
Pinyon (Pinus spp.) and juniper (Juniperus spp.) woodlands occupy over 78,000 square miles of the Great Basin and northern Colorado Plateau. These woodlands have persisted for tens of thousands of years and provide important biodiversity and habitat for many species across the region. Yet, relatively recent infill of new trees into old-growth woodlands and expansion of trees into adjacent sagebrush-steppe, riparian, and aspen communities have created a considerable mix of concerns around wildfire, drought-mortality, invasive species, watershed function, tree removal, and loss of habitat, biodiversity, and resilience.
This website provides background information on the ecology and management of PJ woodlands useful to the interested public and emerging information important to resource managers.
1) PJ 101 provides a brief introduction to and description of PJ woodlands with links to more in-depth information.
2) FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) briefly addresses questions related to the ecology and management of PJ woodlands.
3) Tools provides information and concepts for evaluating landscapes, which are specifically useful for predicting disturbance or vegetation management responses in PJ woodlands.
4) Literature provides brief summaries and links to recently published PJ woodlands studies. Study findings are highlighted and discussed in terms of our current understanding.
This website will be continually updated with new articles, questions, and tools.
Conference presentations.
Conference theme: Resilient Colorado: Moving Forward in Evolving Wildfire Landscapes
September 21-23, 2021
Double Tree Hotel
743 Horizon Drive
Grand Junction, Colorado
Webinar recording.
This webinar focuses on planning, restoration, and recovery actions that strengthen ecosystem resilience, mitigate the impacts of natural disasters, and realize co-benefits.
Presenters: Dr. Jennifer Cartwright, Lower Mississippi-Gulf Water Science Center, USGS
Rachel M. Gregg, Senior Scientist, EcoAdapt
Hannah Panci, Climate Change Scientist and Robert Croll, Climate Change Program Coordinator, Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission
View research brief.
Resilience goals should be updated to better apply to 21st century ecosystems. They propose a concept of scaled resilience, which incorporates scales of time, space, and biological level of organization. By measuring disturbance and post-disturbance ecosystem responses in all three dimensions, scaled resilience models can be grounded by data that are much more useful to land managers than simple comparisons to reference site conditions.
View research brief.
Making lands resilient to climate change has become a legal mandate for US Forest Service land planners (2012 USFS Planning Rule). However, interpreting and applying the directive is challenging because the term “resilience” is rather vague. It is diluted by a variety of definitions in the literature, as well as executed differently in diverse ecosystems by a variety of specialists.
To better grasp how USFS staff interpreted and applied the directive, twenty-six Southwestern Region USFS planners and mangers were interviewed for 30-60 minutes each. The semi-structured interviews were then coded to identify themes and trends. Overall, inductive content analysis of the coded interview data showed that the interviewees had three main areas of concern over the difficulty in reporting and implementing the resilience directive: 1) definitions and scale, 2) flexibility and specificity, and 3) the resilience to climate change paradox.
A resilience-based approach to management can facilitate regional planning by guiding the allocation of management resources to where they will have optimal socioecological benefits. This type of approach requires a sound understanding of the environmental factors, ecosystem attributes and processes, and landscape components that influence ecological resilience of the focal system. Chambers et al. review and integrate resilience concepts to help inform natural resources management decisions for ecosystems and landscapes. They describe the six key components of a resilience-based approach, beginning with managing for adaptive capacity and selecting an appropriate spatial extent and grain. Additional components include developing an understanding of the factors influencing the general and ecological resilience of ecosystems and landscapes, the landscape context and spatial resilience, pattern and process interactions and their variability, and relationships among ecological and spatial resilience and the capacity to support habitats and species. They suggest that a spatially explicit approach that couples geospatial information on general and spatial resilience to disturbance with information on resources, habitats, or species provides the foundation for resilience-based management. A case study from the sagebrush biome is provided that is widely used by the management agencies.
Description: Severe wildfires threaten forests and communities of the northern Klamath Mountains. Historically these forests thrived with frequent, low-mixed severity fire. However, hotter, drier summers, a century of fire exclusion, and past destructive logging practices are increasing the likelihood of destructive fire. Insights from historical fire regimes and stand conditions have been integrated with contemporary evaluations of wildfire risk and habitat needs to inform the collaboratively derived Rogue Basin Cohesive Forest Restoration Strategy.
Presenter: Kerry Metlen, Forest Ecologist with The Nature Conservancy of Oregon
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The United States Forest Service 2012 Planning Rule prioritizes making lands resilient to climate change. Although researchers have investigated the history of “resilience” and its multiple interpretations, few have examined perceptions or experiences of resource staff tasked with implementing resilience. This study interviewed Forest Service staff in the Southwestern Region to evaluate how managers and planners interpret resilience as an agency strategy, execution of resilience in management, and climate change’s impact on perception of resilience. Interviewees identified resilience as a main driver of agency response to land management but, when applying the concept, experienced barriers including ambiguity; scale; management specificity versus broad, adaptive landscape approach; and lack of metrics or examples. Interviewees found restoring ecosystem function to promote resilience while planning for future changed landscapes difficult. They desired landscape-scale collaboration to understand how to operationalize the resilience directive. Our findings revealed obstacles and opportunities for resilience in a managerial context.